When you send out a postcard, your card isn't the only one in the stack of mail people are getting. In fact, you're probably competing against two or three other postcards, if not more, every single time you send them.
I can't speak for everyone, but based on what I do myself, and based on what the people I know are like, I'm not going to read every postcard I get. I'd say I probably throw away about eighty-percent of them, actually.
There are a variety of reasons this is going to be the case, some of which are because I wasn't really a part of the target audience, or those postcards just weren't interesting enough to catch my eye.
Furthermore, I've noticed I'm inclined to only look at one or two postcards at most. Even though the third one might be perfectly fine looking, I guess I get kind of burnt out and lose interest after the first few, so the rest go straight in the trash.
That means a company using postcard printing has to not only make a great postcard, but make one better than all of the others I'm getting. Those are the companies who get their postcards read.
Each time you send out a postcard consider it like entering into a competition. If you aren't the best one there you aren't likely to get the sale. But what makes a postcard the best one? That can be a complicated answer.
But part of the answer has to do with giving people something interesting. The more often I see an image or a design the less likely I am to care about it anymore. People can only watch a movie so many times before it starts to get old, and the same will be true of your postcards.
Vary up your postcard printing so that your key elements are always changing. You don't have to change the central idea. Such as, if you're advertising a lot of sales, keep doing so, but alter how you advertise that sale. Use different wording, different coloring, or different anything you can to buck the trend.
You need to pique someone's interest enough to make them want to pick up your postcard above all others from their pile of mail. The better you know who you're targeting the better the chances are you'll be able to accomplish just that.
As I said earlier, most of the postcards that get thrown away are the ones that really aren't aimed at me; the company just thought they'd be. They didn't do the right research and so ended up handing me a postcard for something I'd never really cared about buying.
For all future postcard printing make sure that your audience is clearly defined, your images are unique, and that you never let yourself fall into repetition.
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